Ex-MI6 Deputy Chief: 'Serious Actors' Already Knew About NSA's Techniques Before Snowden
from the no-harm,-no-foul dept
One of the key issues in the debate surrounding Snowden's leaks is whether they might be threatening our security by letting the bad people know what the NSA and GCHQ are up to. Nigel Inkster, former deputy chief of the UK's foreign intelligence agency, MI6, doesn't think so:
"I sense that those most interested in the activities of the NSA and GCHQ have not been told very much they didn't know already or could have inferred."
That's an important point, since it means that all the undoubted benefits of disclosing some information about the massive surveillance being conducted -- for example, further important revelations of widespread NSA abuse of its powers -- are not undermined by any countervailing damage. It supports the view that the leaks so far have been made in a responsible way, and suggests that continuing to do so would be in the public interest. It also underlines why we should celebrate Snowden as a whisteblower who has performed a valuable service, not as a "traitor", since nothing of value was passed to the enemy.
Al-Qaida leaders in the tribal areas of Pakistan had been "in the dark" for some time -- in the sense that they had not used any form of electronic media that would "illuminate" their whereabouts, Inkster said. He was referring to counter measures they had taken to avoid detection by western intelligence agencies.
Other "serious actors" were equally aware of the risks to their own security from NSA and GCHQ eavesdroppers, he said.
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Filed Under: ed snowden, gchq, nsa, nsa surveillance, revelations, surveillance, terrorists, uk
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And also completely ineffective.
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Well Duh!
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Public knowledge
What Snowden did in not giving us new information, but knowing everyone knows it.
This is hurting the US also internationaly. I think the plan to attack Syria has stranded so fast, because countries now know other countries know that the US is untrustworthy.
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Re: Public knowledge
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Wait... Actors knew?
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Re: Wait... Actors knew?
So people like Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers didn't know, but Halle Berry and Michael Caine did.
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Re: Re: Wait... Actors knew?
Really? This was the shining example of a serious actor you pulled out?
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Re: Re: Re: Wait... Actors knew?
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As well as "Miss Congeniality", though that doesn't necessarily make him not a serious actor.
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The logic
Like posting on FB or other places that "I'm gonna blow up the WTC on 9/11, anyone else in?"
But that doesn't excuse the FBI's incredible lack of action regarding this group of people, either. Supposedly they knew about most of them before the attacks but didn't want to bother to connect the information together to form a pattern.
Notice, they didn't even talk to the NSA, which could have helped them, if they'd bothered. The NSA knew about them, too.
By not having two of the most powerful investigative agencies do anything about it, we were wide open for an attack of this magnitude.
Thus we only have ourselves to blame for the lapse in security measures, and we've been paying for it ever since.
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Re: The logic
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Re: Re: The logic
Yes, you can placate them. All you have to do is surrender all the ideals of a free society.
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Re: Re: Re: The logic
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The logic
I don't remember anyone else rioting over a cartoon.
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Re: The logic
Does revealing this risk compromising our ability to gather more information?
Therefore unless they have identified an immediate and serious threat they are likely to sit on the pieces of information that they have. With multiple spy agencies, each can have what appears to be trivial data that adds up top identifying a serious threat if put together. Because it is trivial the risk of compromise of data collection result in the data being kept to themselves.
This problem can also exist within a spy agency due to internal compartmentalisation of data gathering, which is seen as reducing the potential for damage due to a mole, also reduces their effectiveness. This is the catch 22 of a spy agency, for gathered intelligence to be useful it needs to be revealed, but doing so can compromise their ability to gather information.
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Re: The logic
What specific and solid information do you think the FBI had on the 9-11 hijackers? Not just rumors of evil intent, not just hints that are ominous in hindsight, but information that would have justified arresting them at the ticket counter?
I'm really sick of arguments that boil down to "well of course they should have arrested Muslims who were going to pilot school!", or "they knew for years that Mohammed Atef was up to no good, how could they not, you know, do something?". The FBI does not have unlimited resources, the NSA does not know everything, neither organization has unlimited power, and they have different missions, procedures and charters; what I hate most about the connect-the-dots theory is that it tends to lead to arguments that we should change those things.
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Re: Re: The logic
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I think this should be from the...
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Well, I guess it is a little comforting to know that the NSA has not provided the intelligence to capture or kill the serious actors of terrorism because they have employed counter-intelligence and avoided the technologies that NSA has been using and it is not just that the NSA created such a big haystack that they have been unable to uncover the useful information they have captured.
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The implication:
Reminds me of how the body scanners find more drugs than weapons, yet their stated purpose was to find terrorists...
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Intelligence gathering
This should answer your questions: The 9/11 Commission Report-
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/index.htm
Try Chapter 3 and onward. It's full of stuff that the FBI, the CIA and the NSA had gotten so that their excuses of 'we didn't know it was gonna happen" are hollow at best.
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Re: Intelligence gathering
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Re: Re: Intelligence gathering
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Infinity?
The Commission was pretty blunt about our pathetic failure to even put together a workable theory of why/how it could happen before it did, because everyone had dismissed the first World Trade Center bombing, and other attacks as being "aberrations", and not worthy of serious note by anyone, even when there were far more than enough indications that it could be leading up to something big.
But what do we care about some mullah in Afghanistan? He doesn't use cell phones or the Internet.
Or at least that's what we thought then.
Funny thing about institutional mindsets: they're usually based in past fantasies of what could have, should have happened, but never did because we did such a good job the last time.
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The Enemy
You have to take into account that the American people are the "enemy" as far as the government is concerned.
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It also points out rather forcefully, exactly what I've said all along. None of the NSA surveillance has anything whatsoever to do with terrorism - unless of course you believe that the NSA, FBI, CIA ETC. had no idea that all the terrorist organizations were fully aware of the NSA Global Snoop&Scoop Programs and had long ago stopped using any communication medium that is open to the agency's interception and collection programs.
Eventually, barring another major war, the simple fact that this is all about extortion/blackmail and the theft of corporate/industrial/commercial secrets and research, will come out in the Snowden Wash.
I can only imagine that the perps involved in this scheme are doing everything they possibly can to get another war started ASAP, because nothing sweeps dirt under the carpet better than a really good war.
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